So I've been watching a little "soccer" here and I've been reading a lot of things about why the sport isn't more popular in America, and of course this is precisely the kind of subject on which everybody wants to come up with really hifalutin cultural theories and invoke, oh, Henry James on the American character or Edmund Wilson or (best of all) Baudrillard. But I think it's all much simpler than that.

Americans just want more scoring. Popular American sports have one thing in common (aside from their amenity to commercial interruption): The potential exists for tons of scoring. It isn't always fulfilled, and sometimes a great pitchers' duel that ends 1-0 is the greatest kind of baseball game there is. But if you asked everyone filing into a ballpark on any given night whether they'd rather see a 1-0 game or a 9-6 game, I'd wager that a majority will say the latter (not the aficionados, perhaps, but a majority). In general, Americans want to see offensive fireworks.

As I say it doesn't have to happen every time out. It's just the potential, and knowing that it does happen sometimes. A 7-0 American football game can be awesome. But a 38-35 game can be, too, and in fact is likely a "better" game to most people. Whereas a game in which four points (goals) is always considered high-scoring will probably always have a limited American audience.

Hockey, someone is screaming! True enough to a point, but: 1, even hockey is somewhat higher scoring than soccer on average; 2, hockey is hybrid Canadian-American; 3, hockey is objectively second-tier in America, i.e. no big television contract.

If, in the sport the world calls football, the potential existed for 1-0 games and 9-7 games, I think it would be a lot more popular here, even given that it's furrin' and all the other stuff. I say all this as a someone who certainly isn't anti-soccer but doesn't really watch much. In fact I've cut way back on the hours I devote to sports in my life. So I don't really have a horse here and this is as close to an objective hypothesis as I can venture.

And those of you who want the game to be more popular in America, I say be careful what you wish for. The game will inevitably change to accommodate American television audiences. They'll take time outs, and they'll widen the goal or something to allow for more scoring in a generation or two. Mark my words.